The John Lewis Christmas advert, a festive tradition that causes British people to cry or debate it heavily with their friends and family, was unveiled this morning.

This year’s advert, titled “The Boy and the Piano”, is centred around the life and career of Elton John.

The advert starts with Elton John sitting at his piano, feeling nostalgic, before breaking into playing one of his most notable songs: “Your Song”.

John Lewis

The camera then pans round and we see multiple scenes from Elton’s career as he performs.

John Lewis

Each time, we see a key stage of his career as he gets progressively younger and younger.

John Lewis

And each time he’s playing a piano.

John Lewis

We then see scenes of “Your Song” being recorded at Trident Studios in London for the first time. After that, Elton as a child, performing in his local pub in Pinner and at a school recital in front of his mother and grandmother.

The advert ends with Elton as a young child in the 1950s, waking up on Christmas morning and opening the same piano as the one we see at the start of the advert.

John Lewis

The message being that he owes his success to the piano he received as a gift.

John Lewis

In a press statement, Elton said: “Playing my grandmother’s piano marks the moment when music came into my life.”

You might think that the advert has been spliced together from archive footage, but you would be mistaken. All of it has been filmed specifically for the advert, with CGI and special effects providing the footage for the stadium scenes.

John Lewis

There’s been a lot of speculation about the advert’s cost, particularly with other stores such as Sainsbury’s and Iceland creating competitive festive commercials. However, representatives for John Lewis told BuzzFeed News that the speculation was “wildly inaccurate,” and the cost was actually in line with previous years. Meanwhile, Elton John has donated part of the fee for the advert to the Elton John Charitable Trust.

And in case you are wondering whether this advert was not an advert, but rather a plug for Elton John biopic Rocketman (out next year), a representative for John Lewis told BuzzFeed News that the advert is not associated with the film at all.

In a rather meta stunt, John Lewis has relocated key scenes from the Christmas advert into its Oxford Street store without any of its customers knowing. It will be opened to the public to visit from today.

Paul Grover / John Lewis

BuzzFeed News had the slightly weird experience of watching the John Lewis advert for the first time, in this living room space, within a John Lewis store, two days ago. It was only after having watched the advert that I was told that the room I was sitting in was the same set as the one from the advert I had just watched.

From today, customers can visit several scenes from the advert. For the past few weeks the 2,000 square feet of space housing the set — which is right next to the store’s kitchenware department — has been disguised as a closed-off area undergoing “essential maintenance” so as to fool customers.

The rooms include the living room, a makeup room, and the recording studio. However, store representatives said that the plane scene would not be included, since the interior of the plane was too big to fit into the shop.

The advert has been mostly positively received by viewers, but some have pointed out that John Lewis isn’t known for selling pianos.

I’m sorry but John Lewis got totally played with this advert. They essentially signed up to promote Elton’s tour and the Rocketman movie in return for his appearance.
THEY DONT EVEN SELL PIANOS FFS #EltonJohnLewis https://t.co/g7NY6x4CIa